Lord British wants to take you to space, and he’s closer than you think

Richard Garriott has been to space, but it took his fortune, a few major …

It is very easy to fall asleep in space. When you're at your desk at home and you've been working for hours and you nod off, your chin bumps your chest and you wake up with a start. In space, your head doesn't fall—you simply fade into sleep, and then if you're unattached you begin to float away. This is the sort of thing you hear when you speak with Richard Garriott, a man you may know better as Lord British. He made millions of dollars creating and selling video games, and then spent most of that money trying to get into space.

He says that there is no ground on the International Space Station, nor is there a ceiling. There are instruments and items and all sorts of things connected to the walls, and you can tell the people who are new to space flight by how they bump into things, which sends them spinning in zero gravity. They zoom around, followed by a mess of items and benign, space-faring shrapnel. It collects by the air vents if no one picks it up. Sleeping bodies find their way there as well.

This is where Richard Garriott wants to take you, and he is much closer than you think.

Flying poets

It's hard not to romanticize a man like Richard Garriott. His father was an astronaut, and only poor eyesight stopped the son from following the father off the planet. He began working with computers, and created the games many of us grew up playing. In some circles the name "Avatar" has nothing to do with James Cameron, and everything to do with our adventures in Britannia. We remember when he was killed by his own people.

This is how Richard Garriott speaks when describing what it was like to fly into space on the Soyuz rocket: "You know, unlike television where it's always loud and has lots of vibration or you might imagine it feels like a dropping the clutch on the sports car as you take off at a green light, it's actually much more cerebral," he explains. "It's almost perfectly smooth. It's almost perfectly silent and feels much more like a confident ballet move, lifting you ever faster into the sky, than something scary or threatening."

This is in stark contrast to the vision of space flight we've been sold, the violent and overwhelming cacophony of the liftoff, as if man was by his very will pushing the Earth away from himself. The way Garriott explains liftoff, it's simply man taking his rightful place in the heavens.

Returning to Earth is also different than you'd imagine. There is almost perfect silence as you hit the atmosphere at 17,000 miles an hour. "That creates plasma around the vehicle that is hotter than the surface of the sun. Literally, my right shoulder was against that window," he told us. "And that window is, you know, about five panes of glass and quartz and a few other things. There is a gap in the window that's a vacuum, and that's why the material doesn't melt."

The Earth, near sunset

This is where Garriott sat as he fell back to Earth, intellectually aware that a few inches away was something that hot and that ferocious. If something were to go wrong, he would have to go to work. He knew the craft as well as the other astronauts next to him, as there is no such thing as a passenger seat in space; you have to work if you want to go up. He spent months in Russia learning how to do this, and he knows that until they touch down on land, not water, there is radio silence. The reason for this is disturbing: if you're speaking when you hit land, you're likely to bite through your own tongue.

The landing did not go smoothly, as debris was knocked loose and kept his seat from operating normally. Smoke began to pour into the capsule from under one of the instrument panels, a moment Garriott referred to as being "a little alarming."

"When you hit the ground, even under a big parachute like that, that's a six-ton boulder that hits the ground really, really hard," he said, talking about what it was like to literally crash back into our planet. "And it really is like a car crash into a brick wall." His father, the astronaut, was there to greet him, and Garriott learned that it was just as hard getting used to being back on land as it was getting used to being in space. "When I would lie in bed, since the inner ear fluid sloshed to the back, it makes you feel like you're accelerating forward so you feel like you've got the bed spins after a bad night of drinking," he said. This goes on for three days.

In the International Space Station

He and his father talked about what it was like to fly into space. Richard Garriott was the 483rd person to go into space, and to get there he had to spend the majority of this fortune, undergo corrective eye surgery, and fix his fused kidneys and liver hemangioma in order to pass the medical tests. His body is heavily scarred from the procedures. It cost tens of millions of dollars, made from selling over a hundred million games. This is not a man with a lack of will.

Scaling that rocket up will hardly work. The moments will be too big, the inertia too strong and the gimbals too slow.

For now. It's an engineering problem. Engineering problems are why we have engineers. What you need is a guy with the balls, the vision, and the mental illness to stick with it and make it happen. Which is the entire point of the article.

Scaling that rocket up will hardly work. The moments will be too big, the inertia too strong and the gimbals too slow.

For now. It's an engineering problem. Engineering problems are why we have engineers. What you need is a guy with the balls, the vision, and the mental illness to stick with it and make it happen. Which is the entire point of the article.

Good. Just as long has that vehicle on the video is used as an engine pod, along with two others arranged in a triangular fashion with long struts connecting them to the main body of the bigger vehicle. If they just scale this to be a DC-X it will end like the DC-X.

Yet, according to figures on the very same page, sending up a person in a reusable ship costs five times more than in a disposable one. Funny how that works out.

Funny how the only operational reusable system ever developed was the Shuttle, which although fairly reusable in terms of pounds brought back from orbit, was horribly costly in maintenance between flights.

The Shuttle was an horrible, crippled compromise that everybody accepted then because to do otherwise would've been the same as shutting down NASA's manned spaceflight program. Everybody knew that then and still they tried to squeeze orange juice out of lemons.

This article has confirmed my opinion that Richard Garriott is completely bonkers. After hearing about his haunted mansion parties, the content of his games, and his space explorations, he's completely crazy. In a good way though, I suppose

The Shuttle was an horrible, crippled compromise that everybody accepted then because to do otherwise would've been the same as shutting down NASA's manned spaceflight program. Everybody knew that then and still they tried to squeeze orange juice out of lemons.

And the next reusable system after the Shuttle is going to be better because?..

So far, the "other" reusable system was Energia/Buran, which flew a grand total of once.

Dropping the cost to space is one of the reasons I'm excited about SpaceX's successful orbital demonstration. Sure their rocket won't yet get it to where your average single-digit millionaire can go to space, but it will get it a lot closer than Soyuz.

And once we have a proven commercial launch platform, bringing the cost down will only be a matter of time and engineering; keep tweaking the design to make each generation more reusable and re-engineer those parts that break down the most.

So far, the "other" reusable system was Energia/Buran, which flew a grand total of once.

Granted, this was due more to the USSR's interrelated economic and political issues than anything else. It doesn't necessarily disprove the point that reusable spacecraft are more expensive than single-use, but no one really knows how much Buran would have cost.

Incidentally, the Buran orbiter was destroyed in a hangar collapse several years back. USSR/Russia seems to have an almost tragic relationship with reusable spacecraft, e.g Buran and the lesser-known MiG-105 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-105 ). They got close - and then they quit.

"Scaling that rocket up will hardly work. The moments will be too big, the inertia too strong and the gimbals too slow."

Make more nozzles, each with it's own gimbal platform. if the thrust variations are modelled as noise, 4 nozzles reduces it by half. If there's a time constant to gimbal response, a bigger craft actually makes it easier. If the nozzles are lightweight, the gimbals should go as the square while moments go as the cube of the craft dimensions. It's an inverted pendulum, a difficult but known problem. Go check out the robots on pogo sticks.

Funny how the only operational reusable system ever developed was the Shuttle, which although fairly reusable in terms of pounds brought back from orbit, was horribly costly in maintenance between flights.

... and is also the most ambitious and capable vehicle ever launched. Nothing else could have built the International Space Station or repaired the Hubble. And it gave us a huge load of operational data on where, exactly, reusable systems break down and need the most expensive maintenance.

Thanks to the Shuttle, aerospace engineers are now able to design a reusable craft (or even a spaceplane if they wanted) that does not cost as much or take as long to refit between flights. The Santa Maria was extremely expensive to build and dangerous to sail, but without it modern oceanliners wouldn't exist.

Should NASA have been pursuing a more affordable and reusable Shuttle replacement a long time ago? Of course. In the last 40 years, we should have been able to build a 2nd and 3rd generation Shuttle (improving on cost and reusability each generation). But that's an area where private enterprise might do a better job than NASA has, and I hope that they succeed.

I would not pay $250 million to go up on a Shuttle, because the Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended that if the Shuttle was to be flown past 2010, a complete bottom-up safety recertification of the entire system be done.

It was the cost of this recertification that resulted in the decision to end Shuttle flights, and now here we are, happily flying on into mid-2011, completely ignoring the recommendations of the people who investigated the last major disaster.

As far as I'm concerned these last 3 flights shouldn't even be happening. The stringer issue with the external tank is example enough of why. Imagine if that crack hadn't propagated through the foam all the way on the pad, but had done so during launch - that piece of foam was in a prime area to do major damage to the Orbiter TPS.

It's great that they caught the issue and took the time to fix it, but it shouldn't even have been an issue in the first place, and it's just another example of why we just can't teach and old dog new tricks when it comes to the Shuttle Program mindset. Michloud used a bad batch of material with a visibly mottled appearance and 30% less fracture toughness in making the last few ETs. They had several stringers crack during the build-up of the tanks, but they just replaced them and moved on without running the root cause to ground.

I'm convinced that in the redesign between the Lightweight Tank and the current Superlightweight Tank, the folks at Marshall didn't pay close enough attention to the impact of the change in material properties on the manufacturability and assembleability of the intertank area stringers. This led to some cracking of 'good' material stringers over the years, which were also fixed and ignored - so by the time this bad material lot made it into the pipeline, people involved were complacent to the idea that some stringers crack during the manufacture of the tank, and they didn't bother to look for a root cause until things went bad on the pad.

I would not pay $250 million to go up on a Shuttle, because the Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended that if the Shuttle was to be flown past 2010, a complete bottom-up safety recertification of the entire system be done.

So you would rob yourself of the life-changing experience of space flight, because of fear? Could I have your ticket then to take my SO with me?

Well, he's right about one thing...you won't get anywhere without some sort of business venture that gets revenue from something in space. I don't like how he cited the expeditions to the "New World", though. Gov'ts paid back then because there were both immediate and long-term benefits they sought. They wanted gold and other valuble goods in the immediate. In the long-term, they sought faster trade routes with India and China. But much of the benefits, if found, went back to the investor. Gov'ts today work a bit differently in how they "earn" money.

Our initial forays into space travel weren't done for profit, they were for defense in a time of paranoia. Defense does not produce viable economic wealth, by its nature. We, as a race, need a money-making reason to go besides "expanding knowledge". That's not to say we're even that greedy, but we have to put food on the table (and oxygen in the tanks, for those space travellers ). The first two major possibilities I see are mining (naturally), followed by manufacturing.

I would not pay $250 million to go up on a Shuttle, because the Columbia Accident Investigation Board recommended that if the Shuttle was to be flown past 2010, a complete bottom-up safety recertification of the entire system be done.

So you would rob yourself of the life-changing experience of space flight, because of fear? Could I have your ticket then to take my SO with me?

No.

I would buy 5 Soyuz flights to ISS, one per year, for 5 years. I bet the Russians would even give me a discount.

or

I would buy 1 Soyuz flight *AROUND THE MOON* (I think that this has been offered for sale for $150 million if someone is willing to pay - it is what Soyuz was designed to do after all)

or

I would wait 5-10 years, and buy flight(s) on a Boeing CST-100 to a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable station.

Soyuz is robust - we know the launch escape system works if something goes wrong with the rocket during launch. We know that unguided ballistic re-entry based on the aerodynamics of the capsule works if something goes wrong during re-entry.

The Shuttle is not robust, it's aging, and this stringer issue has convinced me that it needs to be retired ASAP before someone else gets hurt.

I would buy 5 Soyuz flights to ISS, one per year, for 5 years. I bet the Russians would even give me a discount.

or

I would buy 1 Soyuz flight *AROUND THE MOON* (I think that this has been offered for sale for $150 million if someone is willing to pay - it is what Soyuz was designed to do after all)

or

I would wait 5-10 years, and buy flight(s) on a Boeing CST-100 to a Bigelow Aerospace inflatable station.

Soyuz is robust - we know the launch escape system works if something goes wrong with the rocket during launch. We know that unguided ballistic re-entry based on the aerodynamics of the capsule works if something goes wrong during re-entry.

The Shuttle is not robust, it's aging, and this stringer issue has convinced me that it needs to be retired ASAP before someone else gets hurt.

All the power to him, but beings on how he is just a game designer, I cant say I have faith in what he says. Sure, Id love to go into space if only to see what zero-g is like, but Im not going to hold my breath. I think air diving is close enough to the space experience. That way, you dont have to deal with living on a station that makes submarines look spacious, and you arent broke when you inevitably return to ground.

Besides, Im not sure I would want to if only to spare myself the sorrow of needing to leave. Perhaps when space living becomes sustainable Id go, otherwise Ill just be teasing myself.

Very intriguing and well-written article. I've never heard of this guy (though, I have heard of the Ultima series, though it took the second or third comment to make that connection for me) but I want to like him.

As a less technical fellow than many of you here (though, still the geekiest guy most people who know me know) I'm reminded of "Fight Club" where Tyler Durden, or the narrator, opines that the future of space travel will be ruled by the corporations... "Starbucks nebula, Microsoft galaxy", etc. This article reinforces that in a way that makes me wonder if the author isn't a fan of the series; it almost seems like a tangent.

Anyway, at 31 years old, I've come to accept that I will never personally leave the planet, though I hope that before *too* long, we can colonize another life-sustaining planet... but first, we need to solve some problems on our own first. It's like when you move in with somebody, and you get a joint account at the bank. You pool your money, and find that you have more left over after the bills are paid. I'm no Communist, but, if all the big countries did that -- threw all their support into unity, said "forget the borders, forget the little issues, it's high time we unite humanity under one banner", and rather than fighting over land and how to spell "god", instead worked toward bettering humanity... it could happen. Also, another planet... is not going to be ruled by China or America or somebody else. England couldn't control its North American colonies; now we're a superpower. No way is any country going to control a colony on another planet. That planet is going to be independent. However, if all of Earth is united, and the children of that world colonize a planet... they'll still be independent, but we'll all basically be on the same page. And that's really the best way forward.

Right now though, war is more profitable than space travel, because war is a function (now, not before) of limited resources. Find another planet (hopefully, bigger than Earth) and those problems go away, for the most part.

I would buy 1 Soyuz flight *AROUND THE MOON* (I think that this has been offered for sale for $150 million if someone is willing to pay - it is what Soyuz was designed to do after all)

Uh, was it? Soyuz roots are in the R-7 ICBM, designed to hurl nuclear destruction upon the capitalist imperialists. Soviet manned moon program was to use the N1 which went nowhere... or are you referring to the unmanned lunar probe program?

The Santa Maria was extremely expensive to build and dangerous to sail, but without it modern oceanliners wouldn't exist.

The Santa Maria was just a smallish nondescript second-hand carrack.There were plenty of bigger and finer ships around at the time, and nothing about it was expensive or technically advanced, let alone groundbreaking or expressely researched for the quest.Just to say, your argument is not diminished by picking the wrong example =)

I would buy 1 Soyuz flight *AROUND THE MOON* (I think that this has been offered for sale for $150 million if someone is willing to pay - it is what Soyuz was designed to do after all)

Uh, was it? Soyuz roots are in the R-7 ICBM, designed to hurl nuclear destruction upon the capitalist imperialists. Soviet manned moon program was to use the N1 which went nowhere... or are you referring to the unmanned lunar probe program?

The Soyuz capsule system was designed to go to the moon. Their lunar rockets, not so much; they were designed to blow up.

Scaling that rocket up will hardly work. The moments will be too big, the inertia too strong and the gimbals too slow.

For now. It's an engineering problem. Engineering problems are why we have engineers. What you need is a guy with the balls, the vision, and the mental illness to stick with it and make it happen. Which is the entire point of the article.

Good. Just as long has that vehicle on the video is used as an engine pod, along with two others arranged in a triangular fashion with long struts connecting them to the main body of the bigger vehicle. If they just scale this to be a DC-X it will end like the DC-X.

Scaling that rocket up will hardly work. The moments will be too big, the inertia too strong and the gimbals too slow.

For now. It's an engineering problem. Engineering problems are why we have engineers. What you need is a guy with the balls, the vision, and the mental illness to stick with it and make it happen. Which is the entire point of the article.

Good. Just as long has that vehicle on the video is used as an engine pod, along with two others arranged in a triangular fashion with long struts connecting them to the main body of the bigger vehicle. If they just scale this to be a DC-X it will end like the DC-X.